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Planet of the Apes Concept Art
'Planet of the Apes' Concept Art - 1963 - 1966 Film producer Arthur P. Jacobs secured the rights to La Planète des singes after reading Pierre Boulle's novel. He immediately set about turning the idea into a viable and stunning movie adaptation. He commissioned artists to produce a series of drawings and sketches inspired by the novel, to be used as a visual basis for the movie: "I had sketches made, and went through six sets of artists to get the concept, but none of them were right. Finally, I hit on a seventh one, and said that's how it should look."[http://pota.goatley.com/magazines/cinefantastique-summer-1972.pdf Cinefantastique Planet of the Apes Issue] (1972) Concept Designer Mentor Huebner is believed to have produced the bulk of the art that has so far been made public. Former Disney artist Don Peters claimed that he first introduced the ruined Statue of Liberty scenes to the Apes project when he did the original publicity paintings for Jacobs. The Legend of the Planet of the Apes, by Brian Pendreigh Associate producer Mort Abrahams remembered Jacobs assembling a huge 'merchandising book' with 130 pages of ideas to pitch the movie to film studios.Behind the Planet of the Apes Image:Concept Art107.jpg Image:Concept Art109.jpg Image:Concept Art100.jpg|''"PLANET OF THE APES (LITTLE RED)"'' Image:Concept Art108.jpg Image:Concept Art1.gif Image:Concept Art90.jpg Image:Concept Art110.jpg Image:Concept Art2.jpg Image:Concept Art89.jpg|'Thomas' Image:Concept Art88.jpg Image:Concept Art3.jpg Image:Concept Art4.jpg Image:Concept Art5.jpg Image:Concept Art6.jpg Image:Concept Art91.jpg Image:Concept Art7.gif Image:Concept Art53.jpg Image:Concept Art92.jpg Image:Concept Art93.jpg Image:Concept Art61.jpg Image:Concept Art54.jpg Image:Concept Art8.jpg Image:Concept Art9.jpg Image:Concept Art10.jpg Image:Concept Art11.jpg Image:Concept Art12.jpg Image:Concept Art94.jpg Image:Concept Art13.jpg Image:Concept Art14.jpg Image:Concept Art55.jpg Image:Concept Art15.jpg Image:Concept Art95.jpg Image:Concept Art96.jpg|Zaius Image:Concept Art104.jpg Image:Concept Art105.jpg Image:Concept Art106.jpg Image:Concept Art97.jpg Image:Concept Art98.jpg Image:Concept Art16.jpg Image:Concept Art19.jpg Image:Concept Art17.jpg Image:Concept Art18.jpg Image:Concept Art57.jpg Image:Concept Art99.jpg Image:Concept Art60.jpg|Art by Don Peters Image:Concept Art86.jpg|Art by Don Peters 'Planet of the Apes' Screen Test - 8 March 1966 In February 1964 Rod Serling was asked to write a script (he had already prepared a treatment for 'King Brothers Productions' who briefly owned the movie rights to Boulle's novel). Within a year, he had written thirty script drafts and Jacobs began to approach Hollywood's studio companies. However, he found little interest in a movie where the majority of it's actors would need to be heavily made-up for the duration of the film and would be portraying talking animals. A breakthrough came in June 1965 when Jacobs secured the involvement of leading actor Charlton Heston. In early 1966 Richard D. Zanuck, the then-youthful head of production at 20th Century Fox, received a request from Jacobs for an appointment. Jacobs explained he had been trying to produce the picture at Warner Bros., but the studio had put it in 'turnaround'. Even with a Serling script based on the Pierre Boulle novel, and with Blake Edwards slated to be the director, Warner Bros. had balked at the budget estimate - a huge investment in the 1960's. Zanuck read the script and told Jacobs: "I think there is something incredibly fascinating with this material. But I don't know how we're going to pull it off. The audience might just laugh at it; after the first 30 seconds we could be dead in the water. I want to make a test. I want to see if we can do the makeup properly or if it is going to look ridiculous and laughable." Associate producer Mort Abrahams recalled, "The test cost $5,000, which was all they could give us." Heston had suggested director Franklin J. Schaffner to replace Blake Edwards, and Edward G. Robinson was persuaded to put on the costume of Dr Zaius for the test, with rehearsals on 7 March and filming on 8 March, 1966.[http://pota.goatley.com/magazines/sci-fi-universe-1994-06-07.pdf Planet of the Apes Revisited], by Edward Gross, Larry Landsman & Joe Russo - reprinted in 'Sci-Fi Universe' (July 1994) It also featured young Fox contract actors James Brolin and Linda Harrison - Zanuck's then-girlfriend. The screen-test used dialogue from Serling’s final draft from a year earlier and utilized the concept paintings with narration (by either William Conrad or Paul Frees, depending on which source you believe) to depict major scenes which led up to a filmed confrontation between Heston and Robinson. The ape makeup was devised by Fox's Ben Nye, and music composed by John Williams was borrowed from Irwin Allen's Lost in Space series. Schaffner recalled: "Jacobs finally persuaded 20th Century Fox to make a test - a make-up test - for the very dramatic scene in which a bunch of orangutans hang over a human being and discuss what kind of lobotomy they'll perform on him. It was very clear to me that the picture wouldn't work if audiences didn't accept apes talking English. So we changed the design of the scene to a dialogue piece between Heston and, I guess it was Eddie Robinson who was wearing an ape make-up, and that did work. Well, that test was probably made six or eight months before anybody decided to go ahead with the project and I was the most surprised person in the world when I got a call from Jacobs saying we were going to go ahead."[http://pota.goatley.com/magazines/films-in-review-1969-08.pdf The Early Franklin J. Schaffner], by Stanley Lloyd Kaufman jr. - 'Films In Review' (August 1969) While the test proved that the makeup could be accepted on a realistic level, it was still believed that a $5 million science-fiction film was too risky a gamble. Then, Fox released the special effects-laden Fantastic Voyage, which opened to fantastic box-office grosses. Mort Abrahams, who had joined Jacobs' APJAC Productions several years earlier and would serve as associate producer of the first two Apes pictures, explained that he, Jacobs and Zanuck were in a meeting discussing the possibility of Planet of the Apes, and the success of Fantastic Voyage as proof that science fiction could be a viable force at the box office: "Dick Zanuck said, 'OK, I'll tell you what. If you can bring the picture in for $5 million, I'll try to get it through the board.' Dick went to New York and stuck his neck out, and convinced them. He came back and said, 'OK, go.'"[http://www.theforbidden-zone.com/articles/potarevisited.shtml Planet of the Apes Revisited], by Joe Russo and Larry Landsman Jacobs later recalled of the footage being shown to senior Fox executives in New York: "There were nine men in that screening room, watching the test. If any one of them had laughed we would have been dead". No one laughed.[http://pota.goatley.com/misc/night/ The Legend of the Planet of the Apes], by Brian Pendreigh - reprinted in 'Night & Day' (2001) Planet of the Apes was given its thumbs-up in September 1966, and scheduled to begin filming in Spring 1967. John Chambers, already a highly-respected makeup artist at the time, was drafted in to design the ape appliances to be used in the movie: "At Fox, they had done a little test with the first person who tried out, and that was Edward G. Robinson. He was fabulous as Zaius (Maurice Evans was marvelous in the final casting), and I loved the way he did it. The makeup was crude, but they had a semblance of what they wanted. That's how the one concept was started... I was in Madrid... when Ben Nye called from Fox asking me to go to London to check out a system of making ape appliances which would allow facial manipulation. This was six months before the start of shooting. We then had to determine what the makeup concept would be." 'Planet of the Apes' Production Art - 1966 - 1967 Rod Serling's screenplays for the Apes movie had all involved the type of modern city backdrop found in the source novel. The idea was put forward that a primitive city would be less costly to build and would therefore save money better used in the make-up department (though it's worth pondering why the producers didn't simply use a real city for location shooting instead, as they would later do on both Escape and Conquest). A 'Preliminary Production Information Guide' for the movie, dated 7 June 1967, maintained that staff had been producing designs for the city for over a year.[http://pota.goatley.com/scripts/pota_pg_prelim.pdf Preliminary Production Information Guide] "When Rod Serling came up with the ending it was generally agreed that we had to do everything we could to make it as unearthly as possible. We didn't want to give away the ending. So, the challenge was to make up a style of life that these people might have developed because they would be strong, good with their hands. We kind of invented an architecture that was as far from anything Earth-like as we could go. We were inspired by Gaudi, and the Goreme Valley in Turkey. I had an artist, Meutner Hubner ''read '[[Mentor Huebner]'], still a very famous and fine motion picture illustrator, putting all those pieces of research together to get a look, having no idea how we would ultimately build it."'' - William CreberThe Planet of the Apes Chronicles, by Paul A. Woods (Page 67) "We wanted to find an architectural style for the apes culture which would look quite unlike anything people had ever known in America and yet didn't seem futuristic or phony or anything. I came up with a suggestion. There's a Spanish architect named Antonio Gaudi, who is considered a great man in Spain and has some marvelous architecture there. His architecture suggests a kind of arborial past; some of the columns of his buildings seem like giant trunks of trees. I took this to the art director and he agreed that this was inspirational. So the city of the apes in the picture was built in that fashion. Which suggested that these people were - well, trees were nostalgic to them for having lived in them at one time." - Michael WilsonMarvel's Planet of the Apes', USA Issue 2 (October 1974)'' Image:Concept Art31.jpg Image:Concept Art32.jpg Image:Concept Art33.jpg Image:Concept Art34.jpg Image:Concept Art35.jpg Image:Concept Art36.jpg Image:Concept Art101.jpg Image:Concept Art22.jpg Image:Concept Art37.jpg Image:Concept Art23.jpg Image:Concept Art25.jpg Image:Concept Art62.jpg Image:Concept Art24.jpg Image:Concept Art20.jpg|Goreme Valley, Turkey (inspiration for Ape City) Image:Concept Art76.jpg|Goreme Valley, Turkey (inspiration for Ape City) Image:Concept Art21.jpg Image:Concept Art63.jpg Image:Concept Art40.jpg Image:Concept Art41.jpg Image:Concept Art42.jpg|Art by Mentor Huebner Image:Concept Art64.jpg|Art by Mentor Huebner Image:Concept Art65.jpg|Art by Mentor Huebner Image:Concept Art43.jpg Image:Concept Art66.jpg Image:Concept Art67.jpg Image:Concept Art68.jpg Image:Concept Art69.jpg Image:Concept Art84.jpg Image:Concept Art70.jpg Image:Concept Art71.jpg Image:Concept Art72.jpg Image:Concept Art73.jpg Image:Thomassketch.jpg Image:Concept Art74.jpg Image:Concept Art27.jpg Image:Concept Art56.jpg Image:Concept Art39.jpg Image:Concept Art38.jpg Morton Haack's 'Planet of the Apes' Costume Design - 1966 - 1967 Image:Concept Art45.jpg Image:Concept Art44.jpg Image:Concept Art47.jpg Image:Concept Art48.jpg Image:Concept Art49.jpg Image:Concept Art50.jpg Image:Concept Art51.jpg Image:Concept Art52.jpg Image:Concept Art30.jpg Image:Concept Art46.jpg Image:Concept Art28.jpg Image:Concept Art29.jpg Image:Concept Art83.jpg Image:Concept Art77.jpg Image:Concept Art78.jpg|John Chambers' "first try", which he described as "POOR!" Image:Concept Art102.jpg Image:Concept Art103.jpg Image:Concept Art80.jpg Image:Concept Art81.jpg Image:Concept Art58.jpg|William Creber Image:Concept Art85.jpg Image:Concept Art87.jpg Image:Concept Art59.jpg Image:Concept Art75.jpg|Mort Abrahams, Franklin Schaffner(?), Arthur Jacobs and Charlton Heston Image:Concept Art82.jpg 'Planet of the Apes' Costume Tests - April 1967 The aging Robinson found it difficult to breathe in the make-up, and according to the film's make-up designer, John Chambers, the star refused to shave off his beard, making his ape transformation impossible. Jacobs had already been scheming to dump Robinson and replace him with someone cheaper and the row was just the excuse he needed. Robinson was paid off, the Welsh Shakespearean actor Maurice Evans was hired and Jacobs saved money. It was in no one's interest that the truth came out and it remained a secret for over thirty years. The rest of the cast included Kim Hunter, Roddy McDowall, James Whitmore, James Daly and Linda Harrison. The formerly blacklisted Michael Wilson was credited as co-writer with Serling. New ape makeup was devised by John Chambers, who had developed his talents from his time creating prosthetic limbs for amputees during World War II and found success after the war in Hollywood designing the make up on TV shows. The set was designed by William Creber. To cut down costs the concept was altered so that the Ape society was not advanced and futuristic but rather primitive, with the apes living in mud huts. But a total of 200 actors were needed to play the Apes. Image:Wongcostume.jpg|Joe Wong Image:Costume Test15.jpg Image:Costume Test24.jpg Image:Costume Test29.jpg|chimp woman (February '67) Image:Costume Test19.jpg|Angelique Pettyjohn (February '67) Image:Costume Test25.jpg|Angelique Pettyjohn (February '67) Image:Powell21.jpg|Linda Harrison Image:Costume Test14.jpg Image:Sasakitest.jpg|George Sasaki (12 April '67) Image:Costume Test16.jpg|Tiare (12 April '67) Image:Custume Test14.jpg|Tiare (12 April '67) Image:Custume Test8.jpg|Tiare (12 April '67) Image:Costume Test20.jpg|Robert Lombardo (12 April '67) Image:Lombardotest.jpg|Robert Lombardo (12 April '67) Image:Wongtest.jpg|Joe Wong (12 April '67) Image:Custume Test4.jpg|Lombardo / Wong / Tiare / Sasaki (12 April '67) Image:Custume Test6.jpg|Lombardo / Wong / Tiare / Sasaki (12 April '67) Image:Grouptest.jpg|Lombardo / Wong / Tiare / Sasaki (12 April '67) Image:Custume Test2.jpg|Lombardo / Wong / Tiare / Sasaki (12 April '67) Image:Costume Test28.jpg|Linda Harrison (9 May '67) Image:Costume Test27.jpg|Kim Hunter (29 May '67) Image:Maximus.jpg|Woodrow Parfrey Image:Paul Lambert.jpg|Paul Lambert Image:Sillacostume.jpg|Felix Silla Image:Botelhocostume.jpg|Erlynn Botelho Image:Costume Test26.jpg "We began by making a moulange - a plaster likeness of the actor's face. We poured a gelatin-like substance over their faces, and this solidifies in a few minutes. Then we removed this and we could thus have a negative face mold. Into this we'd pour artificial stone, a plaster that withstands heat and is five times as hard as plaster of paris. So now we have an actual three-dimensional bust of the respective actor. Onto this head, we then began to create in clay the ape features. Molds are made for each of these features, and we drill small holes in them and inject the foam rubber with a sort of grease gun. This then cures for six or seven hours at 200*F in an oven. We must make sure there are no bubbles in the mold - or we've lost six hours time. So you see, we make an individual mold of each component of each actor's face. From this mold we can make as many cheeks, noses, or chins as we need. We do not use the same chin or other makeup twice. This is because the liquid latex rubber bonds to the foam rubber, and usually tears when we remove the makeup. Our main concern is not the safety of the makeup, but the safety of the actor's skin. So we use gentle chemicals to remove the makeup, throw it away, and use a fresh supply the next day. The appliances tear easily, especially at the edges." "We had three wig makers working fulltime on ''Planet of the Apes. The big problem is to stop the actors tearing off the wigs and ruining them. The wigs are made of human hair - we wanted Chinese but the authorities refused us an OK to import Communist hair, so we developed a source in Korea. The hair is twice as strong as Caucasian hair. It is all handhooked into the lace, hair by hair, thousands in each wig. Human hair is close to ape hair. We found European hair is too fine for the apes - but the Oriental hair suffices."''Cinefantastique Planet of the Apes Issue' (1972)'' - Creative Makeup Designer John Chambers. Image:Costume Test21.jpg Image:Costume Test22.jpg Image:Costume Test23.jpg Image:Costume Test17.jpg Image:Costume Test18.jpg Image:Custume Test9.jpg Image:Custume Test10.jpg Image:Custume Test11.jpg Image:Lombardomakeup.jpg Image:Custume Test12.jpg Image:Custume Test13.jpg See also: Pictures from the set of 'Planet of the Apes (1968)' References Category:Artwork